off all communication between the Prussian and British armies, and compelling each to seek safety in isolated and unconnected movements. The Prussian veteran was strongly posted to receive the enemy, whom upon earth he hated most. His army occupied a line where three villages, built upon broken and unequal ground, served each as a separate redoubt, defended by infantry, and well furnished with artillery. The village of St Amand was occupied by his right wing, his centre was posted at Ligny, and his left at Sombref. All these hamlets are strongly built, and contain several houses, with large court-yards and orchards, each of which is capable of being converted into a station of defence. The ground behind these villages forms an amphitheatre of some elevation, before which runs a deep ravine, edged by straggling thickets of trees. The villages were in front of the ravine; and masses of infantry were stationed behind each, destined to reinforce the defenders as occasion required. In this strong position Blucher had assembled three corps of his army, amounting to 80,000 men. But the fourth corps, commanded by Bulow (a general distinguished in the campaign of 1814,) being in distant cantonments between Liege and Hannut, had not yet arrived at the point of concentration. The force of the assailants is stated in the Prussian despatches at 130,000 men. But as Ney had at least 30,000 soldiers under him at Quatre Bras, it would appear that the troops under Bonaparte's immediate command at the battle of Ligny, even including a strong reserve, which consisted of the first entire division, could not exceed 100,000 men. The forces, therefore, actually engaged on both sides, might be nearly equal. They were equal also in courage and in mutual animosity. The Prussians of our time will never forget, or forgive, the series of dreadful injuries inflicted by the French upon their country after the defeat of Jena. The plunder of their peaceful hamlets, with every inventive circumstance which the evil passions of lust, rapine, and cruelty could suggest; the murder of the father, or the husband, because the pekin looked dangerous," when he beheld his property abandoned to rapine, his wife, or daughters, to violation, and his children to wanton slaughter; such were the tales which the Prussian Land-wehr told over their watch-fires to whet each other's appetile to revenge. The officers and men of rank thought of the period when Prussia had been blotted out of the book of nations, her queen martyred by studied and reiterated insult, until she carried her sorrows to the grave, and her king only permitted to retain the name of a sovereign to increase his disgrace as a bondsman. The successful campaign of 1814 was too stinted a draught for their thirst of vengeance, and the hour was now come when they hoped for its amplest gratification. The French had, also, their grounds of personal animosity, not less stimulating. Those very Prussians, to whom (such was their mode of stating the account) the emperor's generosity had left the name of independence, when a single word could have pronounced them a conquered province; those Prussians, admitted to be companions in arms to the victors, had been the first to lift the standard of rebellion against them, when the rage of the elements had annihilated the army with which Napoleon invaded Russia. They had done more: they had invaded the sacred territory of France; defeated her armies upon her own soil; and contributed chiefly to the hostile occupation of her capital. They were commanded by Blucher, the inveterate foe of the French name and empire, whom no defeat could ever humble, and no success could mitigate. Even when the Treaty of Paris was received by the other distinguished statesmen and commanders of the allies as a composition advantageous for all sides, it was known that this veteran had expressed his displeasure at the easy terms on which France was suffered to escape from the conflict. Amid the general joy and congratulation, he retained the manner (in the eyes of the Parisians) of a gloomy malcontent. A Frenchman, somewhat acquainted with our literature, described to me the Prussian general, as bearing upon that occasion the mien and manner of Dryden's spectre knight : "Stern look'd the fiend, and frustrate of his will, And now this inveterate enemy was before them, leading troops, animated by his own sentiments, and forming the vanguard of the immense armies, which, unless checked by decisive defeat, were about to overwhelm France, and realize those scenes of vengeance which had been in the preceding year so singularly averted. Fired by these sentiments of national hostility, the ordinary rules of war, those courtesies and acts of lenity which on other occasions afford some mitigation of its horrors, were renounced upon both sides. The Prussians declared their purpose to give and receive no quarter. Two of the French divisions hoisted the black flag, as an intimation of the same intention; and it is strongly affirmed that they gave a more sanguinary proof of their mortal hatred by mutilating and cutting off the ears of the prisoners who fell into their hands at crossing the Sambre. With such feelings towards each other, the two armies joined battle. The engagement commenced at three in the afternoon, by a furious cannonade, under cover of which the third corps of the French army, commanded by Vandamme, attacked the village of St Amand. They were received by the Prussians with the most determined resistance, in despite of which they succeeded in carrying the village at the point of the bayonet, and established themselves in the church and churchyard. The Prussians made the most desperate efforts to recover possession of this village, which was the key of their right wing. Blucher put himself at the head of a battalion in person, and impelled them on the French with such success, that one end of the village was again occupied; and the Prussians regained possession of that part of the heights behind it, which, in consequence of Vandamme's success, they had been obliged to abandon. The village of Ligny, attacked and defended with the same fury and inveteracy, was repeatedly lost and regained, either party being alternately reinforced from masses of infantry, disposed behind that part of the village which they respectively occupied. Several houses enclosed with courtyards, according to the Flemish fashion, formed each a separate redoubt, which was furiously assailed by the one party, and obstinately made good by the other. It is impossible to conceive the fury with which the troops on both sides were animated. Each soldier appeared to be avenging his own personal quarrel; and the slaughter was in proportion to the length and obstinacy of a five hours' combat, fought hand to hand within the crowded and narrow streets of a village. There was also a sustained cannonade on both sides, through the whole of the afternoon. But in this species of warfare the Prussians sustained a much heavier loss than their antagonists, their masses being drawn up in an exposed situation upon the ridge and sides of the heights behind the villages, while those of the French were sheltered by the winding hollows of the lower grounds. While this desperate contest continued, Bonaparte apparently began to doubt of its ultimate success. To ensure the storming of St Amand, he ordered the first corps of infantry, which was stationed near Frasne, with a division of the second corps commanded by Girard, and designed to be a reserve either to his own army or to that of Marshal Ney, to move to the right to assist in the attack. Of this movement Ney complained heavily afterwards in a letter to Fouché, as depriving him of the means of ensuring a victory at Quatre Bras. The reinforcement, as it happened, was unnecessary, so far as the first corps was concerned; for about seven o'clock Vandamme had, after reiterated efforts, surmounted the resistance of the Prussians at St Amand, and Girard had obtained possession of Ligny. Sombref, upon the left of the Prussian line, was still successfully defended by the Saxon general, Thielman, against Maréchal Grouchy; and the Prussians, though driven from the villages in front of the amphitheatre of hills, still maintained their alignement upon the heights themselves, impatiently expecting to be succoured, either by the English, or by their own fourth division under Bulow. But the Duke of Wellington was himself actively engaged at Quatre Bras; and Bulow had found it im possible to surmount the difficulties attending a long march through bad roads and a difficult country. In the meanwhile Bonaparte brought this dreadful engagement to a decision by one of those skilful and daring manœuvres which characterised his tactics. Being now possessed of the village of Ligny, which fronted the centre of the Prussian line, he concentrated upon that point the imperial guards, whom he had hitherto kept in reserve. Eight battalions of this veteran and distinguished infantry, thrown into one formidable column, supported by four squadrons of cavalry, two regiments of cuirassiers, and the horse-grenadiers of the guard, traversed the village of Ligny, now in flames, at the pas de charge, threw themselves into the ravine which separates the village from the heights, and began to ascend them, under a dreadful fire of grape and musketry from the Prussians. They sustained this murderous discharge with great galJantry, and, advancing against the Prussian line, made such an impression upon the masses of which it consisted, as threatened to break through the centre of their army, and thus cut off the communication between the two wings; while the French cavalry, at the same time, charged and drove back that of the Prussians. In this moment of consternation, the cause of Europe had nearly suffered a momentous loss in the death or captivity of the indomitable Blucher. The gallant veteran had himself headed an unsuccessful charge against the French cavalry; and his horse being shot under him in the retreat, both the fliers and pursuers passed over him as he lay on the ground; an adjutant threw himself down beside his general, to share his fate; and the first use which the Prince-Marshal made of his recovered recollection was, to conjure his faithful attendant rather to shoot him than to permit him to fall alive into the hands of the French. Meantime, the Prussian cavalry had rallied, charged, and in their turn repulsed the French, who again galloped past the Prussian general, as he lay on the ground covered with the cloak of the adjutant, with the same precipitation as in their advance. The general was then disengaged and remounted, and proceeded to organize the retreat, which was now become a measure of indispensable necessity. The Prussian artillery, being disposed along the front of an extended line, could not be easily withdrawn, and several pieces fell into the hands of the French. Blucher's official despatch limits the number of guns thus lost to fifteen, which Bonaparte extends to fifty. But the infantry, retiring regularly, and in masses impenetrable to the cavalry of the pursuers, amply preserved that high character of courage and discipline, which, in the campaigns of the preceding year, had repeatedly enabled them to convert retreat and disorder of one day into advance and victory upon the next. In their retreat, which they con tinued during the night, they took the direction of Tilly; and in the next morning were followed by General Thielman, with the left wing, who, after evacuating the village of Sombref, which he had maintained during the whole preceding day, formed the rear-guard of the PrinceMarshal's army. Being now at length joined by the fourth corps, under General Bulow, the Prussian army was once more concentrated in the neighbourhood of the village of Wavre, ten miles behind the scene of their former defeat; and the utmost exertions were used by Blucher, and the officers under him, to place it in a condition for renewing the conflict. The carnage of the Prussians in this unsuccessful battle was very great. I have heard it estimated at twenty thousand men, killed, wounded, and prisoners, being one-fourth part of their whole army, Bonaparte, however, only rates it at fifteen thousand hors de combat ; an enormous loss, especially considering that, owing to the inveteracy of the combat, and the steady valour displayed by the vanquished in their retreat, there were hardly any prisoners taken, The events of the 16th had a material influence on the plans of the generals on either side. While the Duke of Wellington was proposing to follow up his advantage at Quatre Bras, by attacking Ney at Frasnes, he received, on the morning of the 17th, the news that Blucher had been defeated on the preceding day, and was in full retreat. This left the Duke no option but to fall back to such a corresponding position as might maintain his lateral communication with the Prussian right wing; since to have remained in advance, would have given Bonaparte an opportunity either to have placed his army betwixt those of England and Prussia, or, at his choice, to have turned his whole force against the Duke's army, which was inferior in numbers. The English general accordingly resolved upon retreating towards Brussels; a movement which he accomplished in the most perfect order, the rear being protected by the cavalry under the gallant Earl of Uxbridge.* Meantime, Bonaparte had also taken his resolution. The defeat of the Prussians had placed it in his option to pursue them with his whole army, excepting those troops under Ney, who were in front of the Duke of Wellington. But this would have been to abandon Ney to almost certain destruction; since, if that general had been unable, on the preceding day, to make any impression on the van of the British army alone, it was scarce possible he could withstand them, when supported by their main body, and joined by reinforcements of every kind. In the supposed event of Ney's defeat, Bonaparte's rear would have been exposed to a victorious English army, while he knew, by repeat * [Created, in 1815, Marquis of Anglesea.] |